Warning: Spoiler in characters, skip over it if you care. (Stupid me, not catching it BEFORE subitting it. I apologize to anyone who read the characters section before I put this up.)


Death Note is an anime created by the same guy that did the Castlevania Judgement artwork. I have heard A LOT of good things about this show, but I haven't gotten around to watching until a few days ago, and it had me hooked... Most of the way through. If I were to give this a TV rating, it would be TV-14.

Artwork: 8/10
The artwork for this anime Is average. However, it does do something that I have not really seen in any other anime yet. It's goth. Instead of having a lot of bright and vibrant colors, this anime uses a lot of darker colors. Which makes for a more gloomy look. Of course, this also goes along with the plot.

Voice Acting: 10/10
I do not know of an English dub version of this anime, so therefore I can't really rate that. But the Japanese voice actors are great. There is never a time where it feels awkward in any way. Now, please take this for a grain of salt, because I don't speak Japanese. Instead, I watch it with English subtitles.

Characters: 5/10
There are only a couple characters that I like in this anime. L and Light's girlfriend Mira. All Light did was make me angry, and the other characters weren't really characterised well and no one would really care if they died. Infact, there are people so longing for a good character in this anime that there is a fan club for a character that was on screen for about two seconds in one episode... yea. But L is an amazing and ecentric character. And Mira's personality just makes it so that it's impossible to not like her for more than two episodes.

Plot: 9/10
Light Yagami (I switched it because this is in english) is just an average emo highschooler. He gets bored easily, and hates the world. But one day, while in school, he sees a black notebook falling from the sky. Later, he picks it up, and finds out it's a Death Note, or, the notebooks that death gods use. So Light decides to use it's power to create the perfect world by killing everyone he finds immoral. The people start praising him and calling him Kira. The police don't like this, however, so they call in the greatest detective of this generation who goes by the alias L. And so now it's a battle between Kira, the greatest mass murder/serial killer, and L, the greatest detective.

Get past the lack of likeable characters and you have an excellent plot. Throughout most of it, it keeps you on the edge of your seat, and makes it so that you never want each episode to end. Unfortunatley it does slow down, and the twists slow down.

Verdict:
This anime has something for everyone except kids, there is even some gore at the end. If you like anime this is a must-watch. If you've never watched anime, but are looking for a place to start however, this is not for you. There are some scenes that can turn you away if your not prepared for them, as well as scenes that aren't suited for children. The gothic feel does allow for a wider audience and it fits the story, but it may scare some kids, especially the shinigami. I give this anime an overall rateing of 32/40.